How can the City of Detroit afford to provide wage increases to ASCME workers in the city? They will get a five percent increase in pay right now along with a bonus of approximately $2,500 per employee (3,500 of them) with raises scheduled for 2015, 2016, 2017 and beyond.

Is the City of Detroit really going through a bankruptcy currently? If so, how can they pay for increases in pay to these union employees, or any employee?

Something is wrong with this picture. Who’s in line for a pay increase? I bet the Detroit water department will want an increase next! Just charge the suburbs more in rates.

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Charles Henretta,

Fraser

Michigan politicians do not deserve vacation

This past month Michigan citizens have had to deal with an unbearable amount of fireworks noise because of Michigan’s Fireworks Safety Act. Local State Representative Harold Haugh (22nd District) was the chief architect and sponsor of this bill, and is thankfully term-limited from running for representative again. Addressing the noise from fireworks going off at all hours of the day, and on days outside the legal limits of his law, Haugh stated his law has been revised three times, and “you can’t legislate against (being) stupid”, evidently like citizens having no protection from “stupid” laws proposed by “stupid” legislators.

Even more disturbing in the same article, State Representative John Walsh of Livonia stated the Legislature will likely be “too busy” this fall with road funding and other debates to revisit the fireworks law.

Our state senators and state representatives are well-compensated with tax-paid salaries and generous benefits for a so-called full-time position even though they work less than half the year. Michigan’s roads are continuing to deteriorate and the patches that have been made the past three or four months will most likely disappear during the first few freezing rains, thaws and snows.

Yet our legislators have been on recess, or more accurately on a “taxpayer fully funded vacation” from the end of June until the beginning of September. The governor, senate leader and the speaker of the house need to be held accountable for allowing, thus approving, this waste of hard-earned tax dollars, along with the squandering of nine irreplaceable weeks that should have been used to address problems such as our third-world class roads and the tranquility-destroying Fireworks Safety Act.